Modern electronic systems including circuits are becoming increasingly complex. Thus, it is not surprising that it may require increasingly specialized skills and capabilities to design and manufacture these complex systems. As these skills and capabilities become more specialized, it may take the cooperative effort of engineers from a number of different entities to complete the engineering required to successfully design and manufacture such electronic systems. It is also possible that, in some cases, one entity will rely upon the specialized skills and capabilities of an outside organization (e.g., vendor) to meet a specific need.
For example, these days it is common for electronic system designers to outsource the manufacturing or assembly of their electronic systems to other businesses that specialize in manufacturing. In these scenarios, entities may need a reliable and secure way for exchanging information related to electronic design automation (EDA) with their partner entities, but still maintain control over how much of their trade secrets, capabilities, skills and the like may be divulged to such partner entities.
In one particular example, a system on chip (SOC) designed by one entity may need to be manufactured by a custom integrated circuit (IC) manufacturer. Foundries associated with these manufacturers usually have constraints (e.g., manufacturing) which may have a bearing over whether a particular IC layout selected by a design engineer can in fact be manufactured by the foundry. These constraints are typically expressed as rules in formats selected for such communication (e.g., Standard Verification Rules Format (SVRF)). A file comprising such rules can be referred to as a rule file. Constraints expressed in a rule file may contain information related to a particular foundry's capabilities, trade secrets and other sensitive information which the foundry may not want revealed to certain parties. However, for example, such information may be useful for designing IC layouts that conform to the rules such that these layouts can be manufactured by the selected foundry.
Thus, there is a need for systems and methods that allow for secure exchange of EDA related information between entities for use in EDA tools such that each entity can control access to information that it considers proprietary (e.g., trade secrets and other confidential information).